Safety-conscious pilots know that checking weather reports is part of any good preflight preparation. But even weather reports (e.g., METAR, TAF) cannot always capture the severity of weather at a particular location, says Gene Trainor in the latest FAA Safety Briefing.
“That’s why FAA weather cameras can play such a critical safety role in preflight planning by providing near real-time visual weather information for go, no-go decision-making,” he says.
The FAA provides more than 600 camera sites to the aviation public throughout the United States with 230 FAA sites in Alaska. Another estimated 360 cameras operate in North America as third-party systems, such as those installed by NAVCanada and the states of Colorado and Montana.
FAA weather camera images are updated every 10 minutes and there are multiple camera views available at each location, he notes.
You can read Gene’s full post here and check out the FAA’s Weather Camera page at Weathercams.FAA.gov.
I checked out the FAA weathercams website, and am surprised at how few of these cameras are located in Northern California and Oregon. Canade seems to be miles ahead of the FAA deployment of these valuable cams.